Here is a frugal tip that has saved me lots of money over the years. Everyone knows that tool batteries are often more expensive than the tools themselves. But you can often find great deals and steals on last year's tool kits, with batteries, Post-Christmas and at the start of the new year. Pile on some store discounts and coupons and sweeten the deal even more.
I bought into the Ryobi line of tools about 18 years ago, but this concept of purchasing will probably apply to most brands. What I do is look for the end of the year value kits (with batteries) that go on clearance. I look for kits of tools I don't already own. Sometimes, you can really find good deals around Father's Day and Labor Day as well. The trick is to save up your money during the year and jump on the good deals when they go on sale. If you snooze, you lose. In my local Home Depot, you better be willing to buy that "special value" kit when it first goes on sale or someone else will snap it up before you come back next week.
Recently, I bought a 6 tool kit from Ryobi that normally sells for $299.00. It was on end of year clearance sale for $150.00. I used my military discount and a store coupon walking out of the store having paid only $110.00! The batteries alone in the kit cost more than that if purchased separately.
OK, so your batteries in the clearance kit are more than likely already 1 year old. But, in the case of Ryobi, they are still warrantied for 3 years from the date of purchase. So, be frugal and register your tools and batteries, keep that receipt, and don't be afraid to return anything for a warranty exchange if needed.
BTW, I have some Li-Ion batteries that are 13+ years old and still working. The "newer" Li-Ion batteries have a much longer shelf life than the old Ni-Cad batteries I started with many years ago.
If you want to be ultra-frugal, I guess you would not buy any new batteries until your old ones died. But I enjoy adding to my tool collection as I go along. It's one of my things to refresh my battery stock every year with a few new batteries and a new kit.
Also, no matter how many tool batteries you have, if you rotate their use they will all last longer. Each battery has only so many recharge cycles of life in them, so rotating the batteries can help prevent early retirement. I store my batteries on a shelf and take them off one side, and put the recharged batteries on the other. It's like a FIFO (First In, First Out) system.
I have bought some off brand "Ryobi" batteries from
Amazon, but they were in no way as good as the original Ryobi batteries. I think they must use recycled battery cells in those off brands. I bought 2 "brand new" off brand 40v 4.0Ah batteries from
Amazon and they had less runtime than my 5 year old 2.6Ah original Ryobi battery. I sent them back. Both of those off brand batteries only went down to "half-full" and then stopped working. I was not the only one to complain about those batteries. Fortunately,
Amazon has a pretty good return policy and I did not feel at all bad about returning those batteries. That was my experience, anyway, and it was not good.
